


Never Been the Answer

by Niobium



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-08
Updated: 2013-06-08
Packaged: 2017-12-14 07:04:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/834092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niobium/pseuds/Niobium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Microfic of Arthur after a post-movie job which did not go as planned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Been the Answer

He'd figured Cobb would find out right away, but he hadn't expected to get a call in under twenty-four hours. That of course meant Saito had contacted him, which made Arthur surly but not resentful. 

He spent much of the first day resting, letting his mind finally wind down from the previous (dreaming) week of adrenaline, and it was by pure chance Cobb caught him during one of his waking moments. Only a few phone numbers could induce him to pick up just then, and Dom's was one of them, though truth be told he was also happy for a solid reason to stay awake a little longer. Each phase of sleep came with nightmares, and even if he couldn't remember them he knew them for what they were by his aching throat and cold sweat when he woke up. 

"Yeah."

Cobb sounded irritated and worried. "Arthur. Are you okay?" 

"I'm fine," he lied. (He would _be_ fine, so it was only half a lie.)

"Right." A pause made it clear Cobb was unconvinced. "You need me to come by?"

The sparse, Taipei apartment surrounding him made that unlikely, even if he'd wanted him to. "I'm in Taiwan."

Cobb sighed. "Then you come to me."

"I will."

"When." The demand in Cobb's voice indicated he would keep at Arthur until he knew he'd show up at the house.

"I need a few days." Arthur ran a hand through his hair. He needed a few weeks, really, but a few days was all he'd be able to put Cobb off.

"I'm serious. We need to talk. Especially if this was what I think it was."

"It wasn't the Korean job."

"That's not what I meant."

Saito had told him something about it, then. Arthur tried to stay unresentful; the businessman had only been watching out for him (and anyways he'd probably saved his life). But if he revealed much more to Cobb right now, he'd find himself mugged and stuffed onto a plane by Saito's employees in under a day. Saito had probably considered this, and so in calling Cobb had withheld details, leaving them to Arthur--for what good that would do him. 

"I'll come by the house next week."

"If you're not here by Friday, I'm having Saito send you."

Arthur sank back against his pillows. Already he was feeling exhausted. "Okay. Look...I need some sleep."

"Okay." His friend's voice became older-brother-stern. "Next Friday."

"Next Friday."

He clicked his phone off and set it down, which drew his eyes to the black lacquered bowl of dice set next to his lamp. It held a variety of colors, all similar in their casino style: ruby red, emerald green, cobalt blue. Only one in particular held his attention, and he picked it out from the rest without effort, rolling the red die around between his fingers and letting the weight reassure him.

He was home. He was safe. They'd never even learned his real name. He just wished he'd not had to spend so long being hunted in a madman's dreams, evading psychotic projections and waiting for someone (who turned out to be Saito) to figure out what had gone wrong and fix it, all to earn back these fairly simple things.

This was what Cobb wanted to talk to him about. It wouldn't be a debriefing, per se, since he and Cobb were closer than that. Cobb just wanted a chance to make sure Arthur hadn't been seriously injured (physically or otherwise) like one could be when a shared dream went on too long with the worst kind of individual, and he had to admit he wanted to tell him what had happened. (He'd told Saito as little as possible.) 

He counted himself lucky. It had been several dreaming days of desparation and existing by the skin of his teeth, and not some of the truly horrific things he'd heard could happen, but he felt ground down none-the-less. It would be good for him to see Cobb's family: to sit in that comfortable house and listen to the children play (which was usually a prelude to being attacked by them); to eat Cobb's mother-in-law's cooking and be somewhere that barely existed to the rest of the world; to have academic conversations with Professor Miles about nothing in particular out on the porch while crickets chattered in the grass. He also knew they were more than happy to be there for him, and to deny them the ability to do so was almost, if not quite, as unfair as denying it to the aunt and uncle who were his only immediate family. (And he supposed if he was visiting Cobb's family, he should also go visit them.)

Saito had asked him, on the mostly silent jet-ride back, why he still did work when he had plenty of money to live on. He'd evaded at first ("I could ask you the same thing", "What else would I do", "It seemed like a good idea at the time"), but eventually their conversational match of Go teased a true reply from him. 

"I love this job," he'd said, looking out over the cloudscape from his window. He was surprised (and relieved) to find that despite all he'd survived, including this most recent debacle, it remained as true now as it had his first day under. "If I stopped doing it..." He'd shaken his head and looked at Saito, who watched him for some time in silence.

Finally, the businessman had suggested, "You could rest, though."

He'd only been able to think of one reply to that. "Can't stop swimming." 

Saito had pointed out it was believed sharks sometimes slept (or something akin to it), drifting or resting motionless along the bottom of the ocean or in caves. If a creature once thought to die for lack of motion had turned out to be otherwise, Saito reasoned, surely he could find a way to rest and still do the things which kept him alive as well.

Arthur hadn't been sure what to say to that, so hadn't said anything, but as he began to fall asleep he thought about it again. It was as amusing as it was sobering to have Saito accuse him of being a workaholic. The man was right; Arthur could rest a little, and didn't need to regard any vacation from dream sharing as a wholesale abandonment. Certainly he didn't have to do the sorts of things that made him question doing it at all (risk run-ins with COBOL or jobs that could cost him his sanity or life, or run from city to city the world over like an ocean current whose only existence was movement itself). He could see his friends and his family more, and work when the job interested him, rather than when he didn't think he could bear to not do it.

Maybe he could talk to Cobb about that. He drifted off, his totem still in his hand, thinking, _Next Friday_.


End file.
